Lunch Bag Lessons

This section of the Lunch Bag Lessons course for the 2006-2007 academic year is over; however, we’ve had an overwhelming number of requests to continue providing a similar type of course during the summer and into next year.

So, we’ve created Summer Lunch Bags for those of you looking for some additional resources to use in lessons and for student learning.

We’ll also continue to develop a Lunch Bag Lessons II for 2007-2008 and repeat Lunch Bag Lessons I for those who didn’t take it last year. Lunch Bags I isn’t a pre-requisite to Summer Lunch Bags or Lunch Bags II!! That’s just our way of being able to create sections for which we can offer Washington Clock Hours.

In order to accommodate the increased access, we’ve moved to a new server for all future sessions, too. We’ll leave this one here for reference…at least for the time being. Since we’ll repeat Lunch Bag Lessons I for those who haven’t taken it yet, this will eventually move to the new server, but everyone will still have free access to the resources whether they take the course or not.

Thanks for your encouragement, support and participation throughout this exploration of resources for educators.

This site is the gateway to a rich collection of Smithsonian educational resources for educators, students and families. Topics for students include Everything Art, Science & Nature, History & Culture, and People & Places, including IdeaLabs and online activities. Educators will find lesson plans around Art & Design, Science & Technology, History and Culture, and Language Arts.

Prepare, Plan, Teach

At Smithsonian Educators, you’ll find great teaching materials, links to hundreds of online resources, and access to everything the world’s largest museum complex has to offer you and your students. You can also search through the activities and resources based on state standards.

Explore, Discover, Learn

Art and culture, history and travel, science and nature - explore all the Smithsonian has to offer at Smithsonian Students. From interactive IdeaLabs to homework help, you’ll find it here. The Smithsonian has collected more than 142 million objects—from flags and fossils, to sculptures and spacecrafts, to toys and tapestries. There’s something for everyone at the Smithsonian. Check out Smithsonian Kids for lots of fast, fun, cool, scary, patriotic, and beautiful things from the Smithsonian! You can also send free E-cards to your friends!

Connect, Relate, Appeal

Make yourself at home in Smithsonian Families, a website that will lead you to educational and fun things to do in Washington, D.C., other locations around the country, and at your own home computer. Downloadable Activities Sheets, each on a single theme, include word and number games, art exercises, and fun quizzes. With each activity, kids learn about something new, from the anatomy of the giant squid to the history of chocolate.

Visit the Smithsonian Education site and explore your world through the various museums and resources maintained by the Smithsonian.
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NOTES: The interactive portions of this site require the Flash browser plug-in, although most areas also have a non-media or print version available. Flash is a free download and you can check to see if your computer already has it by using the “Test your browser” link in the right-hand navigation column.

LUNCH BAG LESSONS COURSE PARTICIPANTS: This is the last posting for the 2006-2007 course. You have until June 14, 2007, to complete all your resource postings in order to earn Washington State Clock Hours. Clock hour forms, a summary of completed activities and a link to a course evaluation will be mailed out June 18th to the address listed on your registration form. If you need the forms mailed to a different address, please send an email to edtech@esd101.net with your preferred address no later than June 14th. We hope you’ve enjoyed this course!

Edheads is a non-profit organization, which creates unique, educational web experiences that are free to teachers, students and parents. These interactive “games” are both engaging and educational for students and teachers. There are currently six, interactive topics available.

Virtual Surgery
Take on the role of the Surgeon throughout a hip replacement, hip resurfacing or knee replacement surgery!

The Compound Machine
Learn how forces and simple machines can work together to create The Compound Machine!

Simple Machines
Learn about simple and compound machines while you explore the House and Tool Shed!

Weather Forecasts
Learn how to report and predict the weather at the underground W.H.E.D. weather caves!

The activities also include Teacher’s Guides, links to other related Web sites, short video stories and information on interesting people. Edheads ‘Interesting People’ area was developed to help kids learn about different professions and career choices.

Visit the EdHeads site and hone your skills as a surgeon, inventor or weather forecaster while you explore what it takes to become one!
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NOTES: The interactive portion of this site requires the Flash browser plug-in. This is a free download and you can check to see if your computer already has it by using the “Test your browser” link in the right-hand navigation column. You should also temporarily allow pop-ups when using this site.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has produced a variety of award-winning publications, videos and other free materials that can be ordered online. Also available at this Web site is BioInteractive, a collection of virtual labs, biological animations and other learning modules; an online laboratory safety training program and other interactive sites for curious people of all ages. The News section features the latest developments in biomedical research and related fields.

The Virtual Labs include interactive modules on:

The Transgenic Fly Virtual Lab

The lab will familiarize you with the science and techniques used to make transgenic flies. Transgenic organisms, which contain DNA that is inserted experimentally, are used to study many biological processes. In this lab, you will create a transgenic fly to study circadian rhythms.

The Bacterial Identification Lab

The purpose of the lab is to familiarize you with the science and techniques used to identify different types of bacteria based on their DNA sequences. Not long ago, DNA sequencing was a time-consuming, tedious process. With readily available commercial equipment and kits, it is now routine. The techniques used in this lab are applicable in a wide variety of settings, including scientific research and forensic labs.

The Cardiology Lab

The focus of this lab is on heritable diseases of the heart. You are cast here as a virtual intern to accompany a doctor examining three different patients. Each patient is examined using more than one diagnostic tool, and at each stage, the doctor will invite you to examine the patient yourself and ask for your opinion.

The Neurophysiology Lab

Record electrical activities of individual neurons while you deliver mechanical stimulus to the attached skin. Inject fluorescent dyes into the neurons to visualize their morphology. Identify the neurons based on the morphology and the response to stimuli, comparing them to previously published results.

The Immunology Lab

Components of the immune system called antibodies are found in the liquid portion of blood and help protect the body from harm. Antibodies can also be used outside the body in a laboratory-based assay to help diagnose disease caused by malfunctions of the immune system or by infections.

This virtual laboratory will demonstrate how such a test, termed an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), is carried out and show some of the key experimental problems that may be encountered.

There is also a collection of animations that explain various processes of the body, such as obesity, cancer, infectious disease and immunology. Teachers can find guides for classroom instruction, video-on-demand lectures by scientists in the field, as well as lecture notes.

Become the scientist in the HHMI BioInteractive VLabs and explore a variety of scientific processes and methods. The interactive labs will guide you step by step, quiz you along the way, and let you make critical decisions. Primary audience: Middle and high school science classes, but it’s a good site for any teacher to be aware of.
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NOTES: The interactive portion of this site requires the Shockwave and Flash browser plug-ins. These are free downloads and you can check to see if your computer already has them by using the “Test your browser” link in the right-hand navigation column.

Welcome to Recycle City! There’s lots to do here - people and places to visit and plenty of ways to explore how the city’s residents recycle, reduce, and reuse waste.

You can create your own Recycle City scavenger hunt or go to the Activities area and see other ways you can explore Recycle City. When you leave this place, you’ll know much more about what you can do to help protect the environment.

The Recycle City Web site is a project of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 9 office in San Francisco. It was brought to life on Earth Day 1997. Recycle City is a game in which students learn about reducing waste by implementing city projects and balancing the cost of the program to the benefits of recycling. There are two versions available, plus related resources:

Printer-friendly / text version
For those of you who need to print out parts of Recycle City for off-line use, you can do it without wasting a lot of paper by using the printer-friendly / text version. It also works better for anyone who’s not using a graphical browser.

Downloadable version
Now you can use Recycle City when you’re not hooked up to the Internet. The files and some instructions on how to download them are available in the “help” section.

Other recycling resources
We’ve added links to a few resources to help you learn more about recycling and waste reduction.

Take a trip to Recycle City and see how they have improved the city by implementing a recycle, reduce and reuse waste program. Then think about what you can do in your own city to improve the environment.
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NOTES: The interactive portion of this site requires the Shockwave browser plug-in. This is a free download and you can check to see if your computer already has it by using the “Test your browser” link in the right-hand navigation column.

The Center for Implementing Technology in Education’s (CITEd) Learn Center showcases select resources and targeted tools to help you meet everyday educational challenges through technology. Search the resources by role and responsibility or topic to find a broad range of important information and related research.

Educators will find links to:

• lesson plans, websites, software, and other resources for the classroom;
• information and tools for technology planning and budgeting, managing instruction and assessment, and addressing social, legal and ethical issues;
• resources for setting up a technology infrastructure; and
• online courses and trainings.

Although it’s not required, registering on CITEd is free and you’ll be able to bookmark and tag resources and build and distribute custom toolkits of resources to others. Even if you don’t register, you’ll still have access to a wealth of resources and research.

CITEd’s Research Center offers evidence-based, promising, and emerging practices based on the latest research. Explore how technology can be used to enhance instruction with an emphasis on students with special needs. Browse research and its implications for your classroom, school, and district. Some of the topics you’ll find on the CITEd site include;

K-12 Calculator Technology: Use CITEd’s research into the effective use of calculators. The practical findings are presented for specific subtopics within mathematics by grade levels.

Multimedia Technologies: Research in Brief articles explore the literature behind the use of multimedia technologies for classroom instruction across the curriculum. Find suggestions for integrating multimedia materials, advice for choosing programs, and lists of resources.

Professional Development on Technology Integration: What does it take to initiate and sustain an initiative to improve technology implementation in your school? These Research in Brief articles explore lessons learned from case studies of implementation and professional development programs.

Technology to Support Differentiated Instruction: Consult WestEd’s review of the research on technology tools and features to support differentiated instruction. Practical suggestions are presented in specific areas of support, such as visual aids or audio aids.

Look into the vast resources and research available to you at CITEd as part of your own professional development plan.

If you use classic books in your class, but don’t always have enough to go around or send home with students, then check out the Read Print Web site. Read Print is an online collection of thousands of free books for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast.

Need a book for AP English? Select from classics by Austen, Dickenson, Hardy, Orwell, Poe and Shakespeare, just to name a few. Looking for Jack London’s Call of the Wild or White Fang? Look here first. Books are broken into chapters to make it easy to locate the spot where you left off. There is also a short, biographical sketch for each author included on the site.

You can also find articles about enhancing your literature experience: Understanding Literary Archetypes, How to Understand Imagery in Poetry, and Blank Verse in English Poetry just to name a few.

This site is more suited to the middle and high school classroom, but it should interest any teacher. You’ll find some unobstrusive advertising links, so check it out to make sure it’s appropriate for your students and classroom before directing students to it.

Visit the Read Print online library and browse the book selection available. Then checkout the book simply by clicking on it’s link! Here’s an idea… what about creating a summer reading club and direct students to the online books? Then use a blog (like Lunch Bags) to discuss each one? Provide guiding questions and let the students respond or ask probing questions to each other.

The is a pretty simple site created by Erik Kastner. Just one (albeit busy) page with a text field at the top to type in whatever you want spelled out in images. Once you type in your text, click on the “spell” button, and the site pulls images of letters from the photo-sharing site, Flickr.

Simple. If you don’t like the images it gives you, you can click on each one and get a new random letter pulled from the Flickr database. Once you have the letters you like, you can print it, right-click on the images to save them or copy and paste the code provided to place it on another website (for advanced users).

Which of course, leads to the sticky question of whether or not the images being used are covered under a creative commons license for public sharing (so it’s a good idea to check before using them on a Web site). To check the user rights, click on the letter within the “On Flickr” box. That takes you to the image on Flickr. I suggest you right-click and open it in a new window so you don’t lose the original creation.

On the Flickr site with the image displayed, look down the right-hand column, under Additional Information headding, and you’ll see “Some rights reserved” or “All rights reserved.” Generally the “Some rights reserved” allows you to use it (click the title for more information). If it says “All rights reserved,” simply click back (or go to the other open window) to the Spell with Flickr site and change the image! If you want to save the large image directly from Flickr, simple right-click the image and select “Save image as” or “Save target as” or whatever the save image option is for your particular computer and browser.

What to do with such a fun tool? You could create words for a weekly word wall. You could have students use the images to create their own custom letter heads with any word processor, or you could use it in an art class to create a conversation around fonts, signage, architecture, or photography. And most of all, you could just have fun spelling words to see how many picture combinations you can make!

Go forth and spell at the Spell with Flickr site and come up with some new and exciting ideas for using it in the classroom.
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NOTES: This site doesn’t require any special browser plug-ins, but you will need to know how to save images from a Web site if you want to download them for printing later. Capturing an area on your screen or printing the screen can also be used.

This site also contains advertising and comments by the developer, so check it out before directing students to it.

Some schools may block the Flickr site from direct access. Check with your system administrator if you seem to have access problems.

Here is a fun, online drawing tool… Imagination Cubed from General Electric, yes that GE you know from kitchen appliances! Using the drawing tools (pen, shapes, lines, stamps, text) you can let your imagination run wild to create a drawing. At any point during the process, click the Replay button and watch your drawing recreate itself as a small movie. You can also save it and send a link to a friend. Want to work on a drawing with someone else? Just invite them via email or Instant Messanger and they can draw along with you. There’s even a simple Chat feature built in.

There aren’t any instructions for it, but it’s fairly easy to figure out what to do. When you select a tool, a pop-up Options box appears with selections for changing sizes, shapes and colors associated with that tool. You can move the Options box out of the way by dragging it somewhere else in the window. You can print your final drawing, save it (you provide an email address and IC sends an email message with a link to the file), or send it to someone else. See a drawing example and continue drawing on it!

The downside… once you have something on the screen, there isn’t any arrow or selection tool to move things around. There is an Undo button that let’s you go back several steps and a Clear button if you want to start all over. Anything you undo or retype isn’t saved in the Replay movie, only the final elements you actually want to save. So let your imagination run wild and have fun playing with this online tool.For those of you in the Lunch Bag Lessons course, post your comment on how you might use this in the classroom to get students to think creatively!

Visit the Imagination Cubed site and start your own drawing. Try out all the tools, experiment with the shapes and colors, then send yourself the drawing or let a friend know about it!
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NOTES: You will need the Flash player brower plug-in to use the drawing tools and other components. This is a free download and you can check to see if your computer already has it by using the “Test your browser” link in the right-hand navigation column.

The email generated from this site might be considered spam by some email systems. If you don’t receive the email link, check your filter or ask your system administrator to allow messages from ge.com or imaginationcubed.com.

The New York Times on the Web provides a wide variety of teaching and learning resources. A free service for students in grades 3-12, their teachers and parents, Learning Network is updated Monday through Friday throughout the year.

Students can read the day’s top stories using Knowledge Tools, take a news quiz about today’s world, and play special crossword puzzles. Students can also submit a letter to the editor, ask a reporter a question, or submit a science question and search through the Science Q&A archive. They can also expand their vocabularies and practice their verbal test-taking skills, and even take a Web Exploration on a variety of topics.

Teachers can access a daily lesson plan for grades 6-12, written in partnership with The Bank Street College of Education in New York City. Each lesson plan and the article it references can be printed out for classroom use. Previous lessons are available in the archive and in thematic lesson plan units. Teachers can also use News Snapshot, aimed for grades 3-5, to explore current events through New York Times photos and related questions. The site additionally provides teachers with the latest education news from the newspaper.

Parents can enhance their child’s understanding of current events using Conversation Starters, join an online discussion, explore the family movie guide or participate with their children in the activities in the student section.

In addition, visitors can browse Navigator, our list of recommended Web sites, access Issues in Depth on both current and historic events, or take a look back at a historic New York Times front page, current and historic birthdays and historic editorial cartoons in the On This Day section.

Visit the New York Times’ Learning Network and browse the resources available. Be sure to visit the Student News Summaries section and turn on the Vocabulary and Geography Knowledge Tools at the top. Then look for and click on the highlighted words for definitions and maps!
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NOTE: As a service of the New York Times newspaper, this site contains some advertising and subscription information for The New York Times. Also be aware that some of the navigation through articles is a verticle column with “Intro” and numbers to use for moving through the article.